As is well known, communications networks provide a means for users to communicate with one or more other users. Users of a communication system are typically provided with numerous services, such as calls, data communication such as messaging and/or multimedia services, or simply provide users with a gateway to another network, such as the Internet. In relation to any one service, various communication systems, such as public switched telephone networks (PSTN), wireless communication systems, e.g. global system for mobile communications (GSM), general packet radio service (GPRS), universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS), wireless local area network (WLAN) and so on, and/or other communication networks, such as an Internet Protocol (IP) network, may simultaneously be concerned in providing a connection. In addition communications systems can include broadcast networks such as Digital Video Broadcasting for Handheld (DVB-H), Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), and Digitam Multimedia Broadcast (DMB). An end-user may access a communication network by means of any appropriate communication device, such as user equipment (UE), a mobile station (MS), a cellular phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a personal computer (PC), or any other equipment operable according to a suitable network protocol, such as a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) or a wireless applications protocol (WAP) or a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). The user equipment may support, in addition to call and network access functions, other services, such as short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS), electronic mail (email), Web service interface (WSI) messaging and voice mail and one-way messages such as WAP PUSH messages.
Communications sessions involving more than two users are commonly referred to as virtual, online or group communications, and can be facilitated by services including the “push-to-talk over cellular” (PoC) service also known as the PTT (push-to-talk service), the instant messaging (IM) service, IRC (“Internet Relay Chat”), and the ICQ (“I Seek You”) service. In the case of the IM service, users are allowed to send messages to one or more in a list of predetermined users (a so-called “private list”) in a conversational mode, and because they are transmitted “instantly”, the transfer of messages back and forth is fast enough for participants to maintain an interactive conversation. The IRC service is a system for chatting that involves a set of rules and conventions and is implemented via client/server software. An IRC client can be downloaded to a user's computer, and the client is then used to connect to an IRC server in an IRC network to start or join an IRC chat group. The fourth group messaging application, ICQ (“I Seek You”), is a client application that provides information as to which “friends” and “contacts” are also online on the Internet, pages them, and operates so as to coordinate a “chat” session with them. The IM system is similarly arranged to generate alerts whenever a member of a given private list is online.
These virtual communities are becoming increasingly important vehicles of communication and dissemination of new ideas in the online world; such communities are used not only to develop and discuss ideas voluntarily within specific interest groups but they also are of increasing value for a advertisers: in essence they are word-of-mouth marketing and endorsement networks from one member to another member, and are increasingly perceived as the strongest method of marketing. Most online applications also utilize, consciously or unconsciously, the viral effects generated within these social networks and between the networks in their marketing.
In addition to virtual communities, real communities such as educational clubs, book clubs, music clubs, sports clubs, professional communities etc. provide a forum for discussion and interaction. Many such real communities have web pages to share information within their community, and access to these data is often controlled by means of membership criteria (user ID and password) for privacy reasons. Thus virtual and real communities are interrelated in so far as both require some sort of web authentication method in order to authenticate members.
Advertisers can be attracted by the ready-made and apparently auto-profiled set of recipients offered by groups, so as to share, at least in part, the costs associated with communications between the group members; however the advertisers require a degree of comfort that their targeted messages (i.e. messages containing information that matches the characteristics of the group) are reaching persons who are indeed members of a given group—essentially to ensure that the recipients match the characteristics of the targeted messages.